by KYW's Tony Romeo
Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell is raising the possibility of “rolling shutdowns” of state government as a way of dealing with revenue shortfalls expected to reach $2.3 billion by the end of the fiscal year (see related story).
On the same day that Governor Rendell put a number on the likely state job cuts resulting from the budget deficit -- as many as 2,000 from layoffs and attrition –- the governor’s staff was meeting on Tuesday with state worker union leaders to discuss ways of cutting costs.
One proposal made by the administration is to have state employees skip negotiated pay raises. Another, says Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo, is to shut down state government for a day or two, here and there:
“It’s a matter of responding to the fiscal crisis as we need to. We are not announcing any rolling furloughs at this point; we’re just making preparations in case we need to do so.”
Ardo says those rolling furloughs might mean shutting down most state government operations for a day or two per month, or it could mean closing different state agencies on different days.
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